


You Are The Angel That I Couldn’t Kill

by MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Nico di Angelo, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Tartarus (Percy Jackson)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:27:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26502883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays/pseuds/MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays
Summary: Will had always liked mornings. Being a son of Apollo had nothing to do with it—honestly, Kayla would sleep until noon if she could. Will just liked the quiet stillness of the dawn, the crisp morning air and dew settled in the grass. In the new gray sunlight, no one could bother him, and his problems all seemed like distant memories.As Will walked around the unlit campfire, he thought this morning would be the same gentle beginning as all the others.Until a piercing scream split the air from Cabin 13.——Or, Will helps Nico through a nightmare.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Nico di Angelo & Jason Grace, Nico di Angelo/Will Solace
Comments: 5
Kudos: 277





	You Are The Angel That I Couldn’t Kill

**Author's Note:**

> Solangelo has consumed my soul
> 
> Comment please!! Or don’t, I can’t tell you what to do

Will had always liked mornings. Being a son of Apollo had nothing to do with it—honestly, Kayla would sleep until noon if she could. Will just liked the quiet stillness of the dawn, the crisp morning air and dew settled in the grass. In the new gray sunlight, no one could bother him, and his problems all seemed like distant memories.

As Will walked around the unlit campfire, he thought this morning would be the same gentle beginning as all the others.

Until a piercing scream split the air from Cabin 13.

——

Nico was dying. He was sure of it.

His atoms were breaking apart, one by one, self-destructing to escape the world he was stuck in.

Nico writhed in the deepest pit of Tartarus, surrounded by monsters and ghosts, his mind fractured a thousand different ways. He didn’t know how he had returned, but it didn’t matter. His sanity couldn’t handle any more of what it saw. Parts of his consciousness were breaking off, dissolving into shadows and pain.

The ghost of Bryce Lawrence, faceless and grim, pressed his hand to Nico’s sweating forehead. Nico cried out at the contact, so cold it felt like it was burning. Something in his mind broke, a memory gone, an idea shattered beyond repair.   
  


Akhlys stepped forwards, her ragged hair streaked with blood. She reached for his hand, and boiling blisters popped up wherever she touched. She smiled at his scream, smiled as his mind was pushed past the threshold of understanding yet still held on to endure more punishment.

Cupid himself visited Nico next. He didn’t even touch him, just fired an arrow straight into his heart and left without a word. Nico felt fire spread from his chest out, felt a shattering sensation like when he learned Bianca was dead, only a thousand times more intense. He was starting to forget who Bianca was. He was starting to forget everything beyond the pit of a twisted God’s deepest nightmares.

Annabeth and Percy approached. Annabeth and Percy, bruised and blooded. Annabeth and Percy, shrouded by Death Mist, more a part of Tartarus than the land of the living. Annabeth and Percy, holding onto Nico, cursing them with all of the pain they felt in Tartarus that he could have prevented. Nico went blind, Nico went deaf, his whole body flooded with the poison of Gorgon blood. He felt a heartache he didn’t understand, and his body started to dissolve. He was becoming one with Tartarus, another evil dream floating through the made-up world that his own mind couldn’t even comprehend.

”Nico!” Yelled a voice from the void of screaming. “It’s me!”

Nico didn’t understand—none of his torturers had spoken his name. None of them identified themselves, and they didn’t need to. Nico knew who they were, and knew exactly why they were hurting him.

Hands touched his arms, and they seared his skin. He screamed again, even though he didn’t have a voice, didn't have a body, didn't have anything beyond eternal pain and endless punishment.   
  


The voice was getting closer. “Wake up!” It called. “None of this is real!”

No, none of it was real. Everything he was and everything he would be was just a story created by Tartarus, a tale of pain and suffering that could be wiped from the print of the universe in seconds. All the god had to do was decide that Nico had suffered enough, and his very existence would disappear. He wasn’t sure which option he preferred.

The voice was close this time, right next to his ear that surely had dissolved into shadows years ago. “Please, Nico! You’re safe!” The voice sounded frantic and teary. “I promise you, no one is trying to hurt you. I promise. I promise.”

_I promise._

The screaming around him stopped. The hands searing his arms faded to a gentle warmth. There were no promises in Tartarus. Nor was there safety or goodness. This made no sense. Maybe his mind was too far gone to tell. Maybe he should have died years ago.

The hands, now warm and gentle, squeezed his arms, and Nico opened his eyes.

He was in his bed in a dark Cabin 13, still in his days-old pajamas, the door thrown open. And he was staring straight up at Will Solace, who was straddling Nico’s hips and holding his arms at his sides. Will was warm on top of him, and something jolted in his stomach.

Nico’s eyes widened. He jerked to the side with a yelp and Will flew off of him, landing hard on the floor. Nico stood and his sword was at his side in a second.

”What the hell were you doing?” Nico snarled, standing over Will as he sat up.

Will winced as he moved. “You were having—ow—having a nightmare.”

”And that gives you the right to break into my cabin and restrain me?”

Will’s eyes met his, strikingly blue, and Nico faulted at the concern in them. “Yeah,” Will said, “when you’re screaming loud enough to wake up everyone in camp and clawing your face to shreds.”

“What?”

Will just looked at him.

Nico raised a hand to his face. He gasped as the contact stung, and when he pulled his hand away, it was stained in blood and tears.

”Oh,” he said in a small voice.

Awkwardly, he lowered his sword and helped Will up, almost falling in the process. Will winced and held his side.

”Sorry,” Nico muttered, embarrassed. He was only just processing that Will had been on top of him, watching him cry and mutilate himself. That he had reacted by throwing Will across the room, hurting him in the process.

Will just shrugged. “It’s alright. A square of ambrosia and I’ll be fine.” He eyed Nico. “Your face, on the other hand...”

Nico nodded. As the adrenaline left his body, he was suddenly noticing how badly his face burned, and was very aware of the blood trailing down his neck and staining his shirt.

Will closed the door.

”What are you doing?” Nico asked.

Will walked over to him and pushed his shoulders. In his surprise, Nico let him, and ended up sitting on the end of his firm mattress. Will sat beside him.

”Well, for one, everyone in a mile radius is running over to see what happened. Didn’t figure you’d want all the attention.”

Nico blushed. It was...considerate of Will to think of what Nico wanted. Nothing more, he told himself.

”Plus, I really need to heal you.”

Nico looked up. “Can’t I just have some ambrosia, or something?”

”After almost turning into a shadow, I think ambrosia might burn you up for good. Better to not take the risk.”

Will sat next to him and raised his hands in front of Nico’s face.

”Can I?” He asked.

It took a moment for Nico to realize what he was asking. When he did, he gulped. But he nodded, and Will placed his hands on Nico’s cheeks.   
  


Nico expected to feel pain, but the contact was soothing, and he felt himself sag a bit as his muscles relaxed. Will closed his eyes, and Nico watched him as he worked. His lips were slightly parted, his brow furrowed in concentration. He started to emit a soft glow, so light it was barely noticeable, but in the darkness of the Hades cabin, it made all the difference.

Nico didn’t even notice the pain fading until Will removed his hands and opened his eyes. Nico quickly looked away, but caught a glimpse of Will’s small smile. He gently touched Nico’s chin, turning his face left and right to inspect his work. Nico’s breath caught in his throat.

“Good as new,” Will whispered. Nico hadn’t felt new since the forties, but somehow, he felt born again. The other healers who had worked with him had never made him feel like that, like a clean slate, a story rewritten.  
  


Finally, Will moved away. Nico mourned the loss of contact, then stopped himself. He was being stupid, so stupid.   
  


Nico turned away from Will and forced down whatever strange feeling was brewing in his chest.

For a long moment, they both sat in silence. Nico wanted Will to leave, and maybe the tickling in his stomach would stop. But it was kind of pleasant, and Nico wasn’t sure he really wanted it to end. He said nothing.

Finally, Will said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

”No,” Nico shot back immediately, but softened. The fingers of Tartarus were still clutching at the edge of his mind, threatening to tear little pieces of him away the second he let his guard down.

Nico took a breath, then let it out slowly. He picked at the sheets below him and kept his eyes in his lap, but he started, “I just...I don’t know. I don’t think anyone has even seen what I saw in...in Tartarus. And I can’t...deal with that.”

He felt Will’s eyes on him when he said, “But Percy and Annabeth were there, too. Why haven’t you talked to them?”

Nico squeezed his eyes shut. “No, they—they didn’t see it like I did. Their minds filtered out the worst of it, but I saw it how it was. I was just...a thought in Tartarus’s mind. That’s all I was. All he had to do was imagine me suffering, and it happened. He could have wiped me out of existence if he cared enough. But he didn’t. He just...tore me apart.”

Nico had picked a thread out of the sheets, and was now messing with it, pulling on it so hard it hurt his fingers.   
  


“The Pit brought back every bad memory I’ve ever had. I watched my mom die again. My sister’s ghost came back and told me I should have saved her. And I—I _knew_ that that wasn’t true, she chose to be reborn, she’d never want me to bring her back, but it felt so _real._ And the whole time he was tearing apart my body. It’s like everything down there knew that i was a child of the underworld, knew that they would have a harder time killing me, and they just used it to torture me to the brink.”

Nico’s voice started to crack. Tears welled up in his eyes again, and he could feel the scratches on his face as if they had never healed.   
  


“And the days in the jar, Will, I was stuck between life and death. I was stuck in the place I go when I shadow travel. The shadows, the memories of the dead were calling me, telling me to give up. Telling me to join them. I wanted to, for a while. It was too much. I was almost _mad_ when P-Percy and everyone came to save me.

”And then—then there was the _Argo II_ , and watching Percy and Annabeth fall into T-Tartarus, and fucking _Cupid,_ that _asshole_ , telling Jason all my secrets like he owned me. And shadow traveling, and turning dark, and almost dying ten times getting the Athena Parthenos getting back to camp, and—and—“

The thread beneath Nico’s finger broke, and he broke with it. Tears started flowing down his face. He wanted to stop talking, he didn’t want to open himself up this much, but he couldn’t. Everything was spilling out, and he was being emptied.

“I just wanted to die. But I don’t even want to _die_ , really. Because when I die I’ll go to the underworld. I’ll go to Elysium, or maybe I’ll get elevated straight to the Isles of the Blessed. Dad would never give me anything else. But unlike you, and Percy and Annabeth and Piper and everyone else, I wouldn’t be able to be happy. I would see straight through the sandy beaches. The sunshine wouldn’t be real and I would know it. I’ve stood on those shores with my sister and heard screaming all the way from the fields of punishment. I can’t escape this. I can’t escape any of this.”

He finally turned to look at Will. Will, who had tear streaks down his face to match Nico’s own. Will, who had so much sympathy in his blue eyes when Nico knew he deserved none of it. Will, who now knew so much about him, too much.

”Fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck, Will, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, that was so much, I’ve never told anyone that before. Gods, I’m so messed up, this wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to like you. You—you can leave, you really should, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—“

Nico was cut off by Will leaning forwards and kissing him. Nico froze, his eyes wide in surprise. This wasn’t real. There was no way he had gone from Tartarus to—to this, to the dream he’d had so many times.

Then Will’s hand found the back of his neck, and Nico’s thoughts dissolved. He melted, closing his eyes and grabbing Will’s shoulders for support, because he would have collapsed in on himself without it. Maybe this wasn’t real, but he didn’t care any more. Will’s lips were on his, salty with tears, and lightning shot down his spine. For a moment, he forgot about Tartarus and all of the ghosts that followed him. All that existed was Will, flooding Nico’s mind with light.

Slowly, Will pulled away, as if he never wanted to break the kiss.

”I’m sorry,” he whispered, breathing hard. “You just looked so sad. I couldn’t help myself.”

Nico tried to speak, but it came out as more of a whimper. He flushed and tried again. Words felt foreign in his mouth, his lips just wanted Will’s. “Did...that really happen?” He croaked.

Will smiled through his tears. “Yeah. I guess it did.”

”And you...”

”I do. A lot. Do you?”

Nico’s chest started to feel like a balloon, swelling as quickly as possible. “Yeah. I do. I didn’t think you did, but...”

”But?”

Finally, Nico smiled. “But okay.”

Will’s look of concern painted his face again. “Are you sure? That you’re alright with this...with me?”

And Nico smiled wider. “Will,” he said, “I haven’t been this sure of anything in decades.”

Will blushed, and Nico was sure he’d never seen anything better. Without a word, Will wrapped his arms around Nico and laid him down. Nico would slice through anyone who tried to touch him, but he let Will ease them both into the mattress, let him hold him, let himself be held.

Nico felt himself start to drift off when a knock sounded at the door. “Nico, it’s Jason!” Jason called. “You okay in there? Piper thinks you’re dead!”

”Do not!” Sounded Piper from a distance.

”She totally does. You alright?”

Nico just looked at Will, looked at those striking blue eyes.

”Yeah,” he whispered. “I’m alright.”

When he fell back asleep, he dreamt only of the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Hahaha not me obsessing over solangelo because they’re the only well-written mainstream young gay couple that’s not oversexualized
> 
> Anyways please comment!!!!


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